Boss Praise For Matchwinner

He has got a deadly left foot and can change a game in a split second which is a trademark for good players"

Ståle Solbakken

Boss Ståle Solbakken tonight praised Wolves match-winner Bakary Sako – but also insisted there is still more to come from his summer signing.

Sako continued the excellent start to his Wolves career since arriving from St Etienne with a clinical free kick – his third goal in six games which accounted for Sheffield Wednesday and earned Wolves their fourth successive league victory.

While the boss is extremely pleased with the winger’s form, he is also aiming to get more out of him after Sako’s confidence saw him slow the game down on several occasions during the second half.

“He has got a deadly left foot and can change a game in a split second which is a trademark for good players,” says Solbakken.

“Sometimes he has pace – and sometimes not!

“I think he took it a little bit too easy at some points in the second half but his set pieces were excellent, not just for the goal but also free kicks from wide areas.

“Maybe he was a bit casual at times but as long as he gets the matchwinning goal I can take that!

“He will always be a danger from set pieces and can also take people on and feed the strikers with good crosses.

“I think he can also improve with us as well.

“When we lost Kightly, Jarvis and Fletcher we knew we had to get players in who could give us goals and assists because those three had a huge amount of those.

“So we had to share those into more players than those three and Sako should be one who gives us a lot of assists and also scores goals as well.”

Sako is one of those players taking regular English lessons with a languages specialist from Wolverhampton University, along with Razak Boukari and Tongo Doumbia.

But the manager revealed his English is fairly decent, and better than his midfield counterpart!

“His English is o-k but Tongo is a little bit more suspicious about his English,” he explained.

“You can have a conversation with Sako and he can understand you but with Tongo he will say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and think he has a 50 per cent chance of being right!”